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Saturday, January 02, 2016

My Date With Jay

“A date.” The sky would rumble, if
a sky existed in a place half-built beyond the walls of dreaming. The
ocean’s darkness casts shadows upon a terror.

The servant burbled nervously. “The
god-eater was very specific.”

“I am no god.”

“You are not outside her power, O
Great One.” The voice is terrified in its wisdom. “It will allow
access to earth, in a – a suitable human form. You must do this
every so often, or the – the gate will be too narrow. The stories
keep it wide; this could add to them?”

There is a rumble; it is not laughter.
Nothing so small, nor so sane. “Consider me interested. You will
explain what a date is.”

“Oh,” the voice says, even smaller
than before. “Oh, dear.”

*

A story to add to my legend.
There will be suffering for this that will be legendary even among my
own kind. I sit at the table, plastic seat under me, and I wait. The
restaurant is large, specializing in quick meals with few questions
asked about content. I have learned much in my moments of waiting,
but I have not spread my influence far – this body is small, and I
do not know stresses it can endure.

And
there is a magician near. Not close, but near enough. I
examine my body again. Human, male. Young, as humans reckon years. My
skin is dark, and I attract some stares and wary looks even though I
do nothing; have humans come to so little that they fear this alone,
knowing nothing of Me?

The
boy who comes in moves almost shyly, staring at a phone before
walking over and standing
beside the table. “Hi. I’m
Jay!”

“I
am... Tulu. I believe we are to have a date?”

“I
guess? I’ve never done one: are they hard?” he asks as he plops
down into the seat across from me.

“I have not had one either; they are
– not something I do.”

“Oh! I’m only eleven – which is
old for a Jay – and I figured I’d learn lots about it later. I
know humans kiss, which is like hugging but not!”

I blink. “I believe that is true,
yes.”

“Also,” he says, flinging the word
out the way some do invocations to their gods, “you’re male too,
right? I get that confused about humans sometimes because they’re
pretty weirdy!”

“You are not human?” I say it
carefully, extending my senses. I am far beyond anything humans
know, but he seems entirely human to all my senses.

“Nope! I’m a Jay, which means I’m
sometimes a Jaysaurus and everything.” And he grins then, the grin
impossibly wide and friendly, an offering and binding both.

Even the god-eater that called me here
would not bind me as this boy does. Even the magician I sense could
not; even the stars themselves cannot. “What are you?” I say, and
my voice is deep and terrible, the language nothing humans speak.

The kid blinks, looking shocked. “I
just say: I’m Jay. It’s also a what and
you’re scaring people and that’s pretty mean! If everyone gets
scared, we won’t get any KFC and it’s all kinds of nummy you
know.”

“Nummy.”

“Yup!”
And I don’t know if he does a binding, or if whatever power
embodies him is deeper than than, but people cease fleeing and he
gets us chicken and pop and asks me to tell him about myself, which
he informs me is a line he learned from the Internet.

“Know me,”
I say, and Jay blinks.

“Oh,
I know you,” he says. “I totally saw you when I came in.”

“This is not my form,”
I try.

“I
have other ones too, but I like this one because I can be all kinds
of jaysome and not scare my friends and I bet we would be friends
too!”

“I
do not have friends.” I mean it to be a threat; I am certain he
doesn’t take it like that at all.

“We
could be friends, then! You have tentacles and I have some too when I
want to and –.” He actually falls silent. For a moment I think he
has truly seen Me, and then his smile is somehow even bigger,
delighted, an eclipse of the world around us. “We both have
tentacles, Tulu,”
he almost shouts.

I say
nothing, trying to process the power in his smile.

“We
could have the most epic snowball fight ever!”

It
takes me even longer to process than than it did the power of Jay’s
smile. “You wish to have a snowball fight.”

“I
bet it would be the best ending to a date ever. We can throw lots of
them, and find a hugey field so you can be all big and I could be big
too and we can have lots of fun!”

I eat
the chicken; Jay has already finished his. “I have never had a
snowball fight.”

“Really?
They’re a lot of fun.” And he is out of the booth faster than
even my eyes can track, tugging my hand toward the door. And he
reaches in, somehow, pulling at the rest of me as well without even
thinking about it.

I
stand. I follow. As much from shock as anything else. To all my
senses, the boy appears entirely human. Even though he cannot be that
at all. I consider the power it must take to hide such power and
shudder a little despite myself; I am ancient, but I am not forever,
and I can be bound. I was long ago, and that binding still holds much
of my power deep under the waves. I do not think that what bound me
could touch this child at all.

“Are
you cold? I know what to do for cold,” he says, pulling off his
jean jacket and putting it around my shoulders.

“My
home is under the oceans where there has not been light for
millennium. I am not cold,” I say.

“Oh.”
And Jay pouts. “I thought that was a good date thing, though!”

“I
know,” I say, without even meaning to. “It was.” I catch up
with myself, brace my nature against the power of the grin that is
hurled my way. “You confuse me.”

“Charlie
and Honcho say I do that a lot! It’s totally a talent,” he says,
then pauses. “So, uhm!”

“But
you’re not old
either,” he says with appalling certainty. “And
you made yourself look young too and that means a lot you know!”

He
holds out a hand, hesitantly. I take it, and we walk. People stare.
Humans are strange about this as well? Truly? I make to speak, but
frowns turn into smiles as Jay says hello and waves. Hatred
dissolves; even madness breaks under his cheerfulness. I have a cult
even in this world, and their members are many and terrible – I
think he could destroy them without even intending to.

We
find a field, and I let some of my power out. Tentacles that tickle
Jay mercilessly until he releases some
of his own; he still seems human, even when doing this, and then
snags up snowballs and hurls them toward me with a whoop of joy.

I
respond, and we battle with snow for hours before Jay declares us
both the winners and looks entirely human again after; it is harder
for me, but I manage to pull the seeming back into place.

“I
could help with that, but I bet you’d be cross?” Jay says.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”
He kicks grass in what used to be a snow-covered field. “I know
Charlie put you up to this, but I hope you had fun, Tulu?”

“It
was very informative,” I say, which is not a lie at all.

And
Jay grins, and slams into me. The hug is not tight. There is no
binding, no power beyond simply being himself. It is enough that I am
left almost breathless, who does not breathe at
all. He pulls back first, and
thanks me using a name nothing in this world should know.

“There
are safer names to use for me in this world, such
as C –.”

“But
I like Tulu more, though! Could I come and visit you sometime?” And
he looks worried, and eager, and nervous all at once.

“It
will need to be arranged. I will have my people contact you.”

Jay
grins, and is gone in a blur moments later. I make a way back home,
into the depths. I tell
myself it is not harder than it should be, and almost I believe that.

*

“Great
One?” my servant says, shaking a little.

I do
not know how much he saw or sensed of
the journey. “The boy I
dated will want to visit R'lyeh.
You will arrange this, Dagon.”

“Of
course,” my servant says in relief, unaware that this means he has
not escaped punishment at all.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”